Levon Helm and Bob Dylan up for Grammys

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Collaborators from the 1960s vie for 2009 Grammy award

Levon Helm, in this photo from February 2008, performs at one of the 'rambles' he frequently hosts at his home in Woodstock. (Freeman photo by Tania Barricklo)

Update – Levon Helm’s Electric Dirtwon a Grammy but Bob Dylan came up short.

Levon Helm, former member of The Band, is nominated for a Grammy for his CD Electric Dirt.

Bob Dylan is also nominated for the same award in the “Best Americana Album” category, for Together Through Life. Dylan has also been nominated for 2009 Grammy Awards in the “Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance” category, for “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” from Together Through Life. (the video is on the next page)

Since the Grammys are tied to album sales, it is expected that Dylan will beat Levon Helm.The show starts at 8 PM ET on CBS.

Dylan hired The Hawks from Ronnie Hawkins before they were called The Band to tour with him in 1966. Dylan’s conversion to rock and roll from folk was bringing out the jeering section which drove Helm crazy. He quit in England and was replaced for the rest of the tour.

Dylan ended the tour by having a motorcycle accident and holing up in his doctor’s cottage in Woodstock NY while the rumors of life and death swirled around him. The Band, laid up without a tour, rented a house is West Saugerties, NY they dubbed “The Big Pink”.

Hiding out with his band mates, Dylan started writing a new kind of music that was recorded and spun out as some of the earliest Dylan bootlegs. The music was different, funny, lose and based on Americana folk and rock music. In frustration with the bootleg copies, Columbia released it as The Basement Tapes in 1975.
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Amateur video of Challenger explosion by Optometrist

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Is that trouble or what?

Amateur video of Challenger explosion

By Grace Schneider From Louisville Courier Journal

On a chilly January morning 24 years ago, Corydon optometrist Jack Moss raised his new video camera to the sky over central Florida and captured one of the darkest moments in American space exploration – the explosion of the shuttle Challenger.

In the videotape, a stream of white smoke behind the climbing shuttle shoots into view – but Moss, his wife and a neighbor noticed immediately that something was amiss when the channel separated into two streams.

“That’s trouble of some kind,” Moss can be heard saying. “That didn’t look right.”

Moments later, someone is heard telling Moss that the Challenger had blown up.

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CBC erects pay-as-you embed pay wall

Posted on January 29, 2010 by NJN Network

Canada’s national broadcaster wants you to pay if you use their stories in a blog

CBC pay wall, maybe this snap of their website will cost $250 a month click for large image

CBC pay wall, maybe this snap of their website costs $250 a month, click for larger image

Michael Geist, copyright lawyer and blogger, Twitted this today,

“CBC adopts new licensing plan: wants $250 to embed 1 article on a site for 1 month http://bit.ly/bwxM1e (via @Jnnn) about 5 hours ago from Tweetie”

This is a new form of pay wall – you can read but don’t touch.

The rate of $250 per story per month is so ludicrous. There is no market. No one is going to pay CBC anything like $250 per month for a story.

The economics of it are upside down. There are no sites making $250 from a single post on a monthly basis. How many internet sites are generating $250 from their whole site? Not many blogs.

There is no market for this CBC attempt to get double paid by taxpayers. We are already pumping $1 billion annually to float the CBC boat.
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Pee-Wee Gets An iPad (VIDEO)

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

more about “Pee-Wee Gets An iPad (VIDEO)“, posted with vodpod

Harper Appoints Disability Advocate to Senate

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Conservatives now outnumber Liberals 51-49 in Canada’s Senate. Not bad for a Prime Minister who wanted to abolish the Senate

Vim Kochhar, from Ontario, is a businessman. He is the President of Vimal Group in Toronto which manufactures and retails quality pine furniture and home furnishings. Vimal Group is said to work for InterContinental Hotels and Howard Johnson Hotels.

He was responsible for project management of major hotels around the world. He is an entrepreneur and a professional engineer, and, for over 20 years, was associated with the construction industry in Canada and abroad.

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Stephen’s Housebound (Video)

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

After a week of January thaw with rain and bare ground, we got a fresh blanket of snow. Everyone is using it as an excuse to stay indoors including me.

Stephen's Housebound, snow on the wheelchair ramp.

It’s really not much snow but why not take the day inside eh?

The TV room is full of girls from a sleepover alternating between movies and XBox. They’re eating toast and popcorn.

Down the hall, I can hear the click of someone on their keyboard.

The snow plow went by but there will be time enough to go out, later.

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iPad Must Buy For 75 million Touch users

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

I can feel it already – the compelling urge to put my credit card down for a new Apple iPad. My name is on the email list.

I share that urge with 75 million other people who are hooked on the Touch experience. Apple sent me an email invitation to put my name on the list and why not eh?

Touch users have already voted with their wallets 75 million times plus more than a billion times for downloads.

It’s easy, fun and fast. You can feel those two fingers on the screen, flipping phone numbers, sending messages and picking music.

It doesn’t matter to “Touch” users if the iPad is perfect – it’s bigger than an iTouch and has the same on-line all-the-time usefulness of the iPhone 3Gs – Wi-Fi and 3G.
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Ads soft pedal disability discrimination with humor

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

“Beyond the Label” $4 million campaign aimed at employers and work environment

A new national US ad campaign pokes light fun at stereotypical images of people with disabilities. The point of the multi-media campaign is that everybody is different.

The ads get beyond the “pity them” or hit you on the head stories about ADA fines if you don’t.

Diversity in culture is not something new but the stigma attached to wheelchairs, white canes and developmental disabilities runs deep within mainstream culture.

Ask yourself – when was the last time the person with the disability was given a leading role in a TV show or movie and he/she wasn’t a grouch, bitter or the mail boy?

Could work who knows? It’s a new approach to get people beyond prejudices and hive mentality. Check out their website Think Beyond the Label

In an amazing bit of hubris, the NY Times claimed copyright on the ad in this story, which came from Think Beyond the Label. Great way to start a public service campaign. I know they are going bankrupt but that’s just plain silly.

So What I’m the Premier (Video)

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Snubbing rural PEI one more time

Video on the next page.
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Roseanne Cash Sea of Heartbreak (Video)

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Stephen Pate

From The List of the 100 Best Country Songs given to her by her dad, Johnny Cash

It takes courage and skill to pull off a live performance of your record but here Roseanne Cash is. At Waterloo Records, Austin TX schlepping her album The List. Sounds good to me. The guitarist is John Leventhal her husband and producer. Thanks for the fan video from someone who worked at the store.

Check out her interview in the Chicago Tribune.